Independent MMORPG Spotlight

The chipped Dagger is a java based MMORPG. At the time of this article the game is in Alpha testing and host a small but loyal community of testers. At first glance the game doesn't look like much. The graphics are, without a doubt, arcane at this point. But there are several reasons for this. One reason is that the game is being coded by one man, Don McGlumphy.

“...about 3 months back I was chatting with Will and talkig to him about his browser-based MMO that he had been working on. It was a fairly simple top-down, 2D, tile-based game, but it actually had people playing it! I thought that I could actually make something similar in Java, so I set out to see what sort of MMO I could create if I simplified the graphics engine.”

Don and his skeleton crew, consisting of an artist/admin Krumple and behind the scenes admin Will, work tireless hours adding updates to the game. The second reason is that the developers are well aware that the task of competing with the mega-budget games with shiny nice 3D graphics is quite impossible. So, they turn all their focus on making the game play and mechanics the best they can possibly be.

The community that has formed mainly consist of people looking for something out of the main stream gaming scene. Something they can be apart of and help build. Most players double as volunteer map editors, lore writers, and wiki builds. And almost everyone has suggestions on how to make the game better.

The game is mainly item based. There are no levels, no exp, no classes. Everyone starts with the same list of possible attacks and defenses. As you explore, kill creatures, and acquire loot you'll begin to develop your character by what items you choose to equip. The vision of the game is to have a full sandbox style of play. Players will craft items, create an economy, build custom houses, even develop in game towns. Item crafting will be a is planned to have reverse engineering capabilities, where players will be able to take existing items and break them back down to enhance and create new crafting recipes.

Everything exist on one realm and the game over world is huge (more than 16 million tiles). There are no instances of dungeons, and no shards. It is free to play in the majority of the game world. There are premium distant areas, that hold the games toughest challenges, that the player can gain access to via game time tokens. The tokens are in game items and can be traded or even found on monsters.

The Chipped Dagger is definitely not for everyone, but if you looking for something different, low key, and fun to play, it may be right up your alley.

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